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sat on the bed. “You’re far too quiet and you’re not eating.” She squeezed Sarah’s hand. “If it was just the not talking, I wouldn’t be so worried.”
    Sarah gave her a weak smile. “It’s stupid, really. You’ll think I’m being stupid.”
    “Try me.”
    “Margot St. Clare…” The name was barely past her lips when she was interrupted by Alex’s theatrical groan. “See, I told you you’d think I was stupid.” She pulled the sheets up to hide her face, so that she heard Alex’s apology from beyond a layer of cotton.
    “I’m sorry. You can tell me. I won’t say a word until you’ve finished. I promise.”
    Peeking out, Sarah grimaced and then spoke quickly. “At the picnic, I told Lyssa about my exam, and she hugged and kissed me, and Margot obviously saw it and gave us both a really nasty look.” The words sounded completely ridiculous as soon as they were out in the open, and when she saw a muscle at the corner of Alex’s jaw begin to twitch, she put her out of her misery by laughing first. “I feel like such a fucking numpty.”
    “Oh, honey.” Alex reached up and tousled her hair. “Margot hates pretty much everyone and everything. I think she once put a hex on Quinn for growing an ungodly moustache.”
    “She did not.”
    “Or maybe it was unmanly. Y’know, a bit too ‘Village People.’ I forget,” Alex said. They were still giggling when the phone rang. “Speak of the devil,” she muttered when she saw the number on the screen. For a moment, Sarah felt sure it was Margot calling to damn them from afar, but then Alex mouthed “Quinn” and picked up the handset.
    “Hello?”
    Whatever Quinn told her made her sit up a little straighter. Sarah set her mug down, watching Alex’s face for clues, but Alex gave nothing away until she’d ended the call with a crisp, “Yes, sir.”
    “Dare I ask?” Sarah tried to keep her voice light, but she could hear the tension creep into the question.
    Alex’s eyes were bright with excitement when she turned around. “That warehouse in Ruby, the one we’ve had under surveillance?”
    Sarah nodded; it was the biggest operation Alex had been involved with since starting with the Avery PD. Meth, cocaine, and prescription drugs were all finding their way into the hands of dealers via a large, nondescript warehouse in one of Ruby’s less salubrious districts.
    “Quinn’s planning a raid on it tomorrow night,” Alex said.
    “But you’re on an early tomorrow.” As soon as Sarah spoke, she knew what the phone call had been about. “Oh.”
    “Yeah.” Alex dragged the word out and Sarah saw the conflict flit across her face; she wanted to be involved just as desperately as she didn’t want Sarah to worry. “He asked me to swap my shift.”
    Sarah cupped a hand beneath Alex’s chin and raised her head until their eyes met. “You be careful,” she said.
    Alex nodded. “Will you be okay?”
    It took a lot for Sarah not to blink, but she managed it. “I’ll be fine.”

    *
    The trail beneath Sarah’s sneakers was carpeted with pine needles and other detritus from the forest surrounding her. The cushioned layer was hard work to run on, but the route was lovely, looping through the land they had bought with the cabin and marking the halfway point of her jog by suddenly leaving the trees and breaking out onto a beautiful mile-long stretch at the side of the lake.
    A breeze hit her flushed cheeks as she followed the path to the right and continued along the shoreline. She could feel the sweat cooling on her back, and a slight ache where the old fracture in her ankle had knitted together in imperfect alignment. A series of splashes told her that Tilly had decided to interrupt her own run with a swim, and high in the branches something brightly colored sang as they passed.
    Sarah welcomed the myriad distractions; they stopped her from looking at her watch or thinking about how near the sun was to the horizon. She planned to finish her